


Live with Ghosts

by suyari



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Barnes Family, M/M, Military Funeral, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Spoilers, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6796747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suyari/pseuds/suyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It may not have been something anyone talked about. May not even have been something a body admitted to back when she was a girl. But Rebecca had always known Steve and Bucky were made in the stars for one another.</p><p>***Post CACW fic***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live with Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains minor spoilers for Captain America: Civil War. Please be advised.

Rebecca Barnes Proctor had lived a good life. There had been ups and downs, but that was natural - anyone who said they hadn’t any of either didn’t know how to keep score. She could honestly say she had very few regrets. And of them, only one would carry through to the beyond, where she hoped to make amends. Or so she thought. 

Her family had been careful to keep the truth from her, probably afraid of her reaction. Neither of her sisters were told by their own. And so it was a shock to find a manhunt underway for a man who had been dead for over seventy years. Just hearing his name had almost stopped her heart. But, seeing his face on television - not the young, happy face of the brother she’d loved before, during, and after the war, but a ragged, worn, hollowed out man with dark eyes - had drawn all the strength from her knees. Her daughter-in-law had called first. Beating Evie by a mere ten minutes. None of them would listen when she swore up and down the man on the screen was _not_ her brother. It didn’t matter what they said. She knew in her heart, it wasn’t Bucky. 

When the truth came out, she felt a mixture of relief and the all encompassing grief of losing him all over again. Suddenly his face was on every channel - the youthful, happy brother they’d lost so long ago - as the media began to rehash his life. The calls began again. The reporters coming shamelessly to the door and following members of his family around. For their children, it was a slightly nostalgic turn of events. For their grandchildren, it was a new and untested world. For the younger sisters of James Buchanan Barnes, it was a return to haunting torment. 

It was Annie who pushed for the lawsuit. Evie and Becca standing proudly beside her from the moment she brought it up and right on through. The family of one of World War Two’s greatest heroes were fighting back and it felt good to be able to protect Bucky for the first time in their lives. They had all tried to get in contact with Steve, but he was nowhere to be found. Although they found support in his fellow Avenger, Tony Stark who reached out to them when the marches started. 

By the end of it, they were all exhausted and worn out in every way, but triumphant. And that more than anything settled peace in their hearts. It had taken two years, a team of the best lawyers in the land, an aggressive social media campaign, several marches, endless interviews, and thousands of people from all over the world, but the evils thrust upon their brother’s good name were officially pardoned and he was reinstated in his proper place as a true hero, both in the war, and beyond. 

Steve popped up every now and again, but never stayed around long enough for anyone to pin him down. Which had been for the best, even if it had hurt to look at him from across a crowded room. They decided to have a celebration, a family reunion of sorts, so that everyone with ties to Bucky could bask in justice served and reconnect, bringing him back to life in the only way they had. 

It was strange when the invitation came to hold the gathering at the Wakandan Embassy. They were assured by the Wakandan Ambassador that King T’Challa himself wished to make amends for the initial slight that had launched the entire spiral. He wished to host the celebration as a way to honor their family and the sacrifices and suffering they had endured from the moment the Barneses had lost their only male heir to a war to keep the world safe for all. When put that way, it was difficult to say no and so they humbly accepted. 

King T’challa had personally promised them a private, intimate affair with the full protection of Wakanda and the Black Panther. It was truly more than even they could have imagined at their youngest and brightest. The former Barnes sisters sat at the dais with a pair of honorary seats. To see their family spread out around them, to see the legacy Bucky had truly left behind was almost more than they could bear. They spent nearly an hour working though hugs and clasped hands, kisses and teary eyes. They told stories and danced to Bucky’s favorite music provided by a real live band. They shared their lives with their entire family and it brought them together in a way that was difficult to achieve on a day to day basis. Even after so many years.

Somewhere toward the end, when everyone had eaten and they had done most of their crying and had danced themselves breathless, after the speeches and the slideshow, the newsreels and the historical accounts given by Bucky’s teammates, superiors and fellows through the decades they stood upon the dais and sang. 

“Thank you,” Rebecca said into the microphone in her hand. “Thank you for not booing a gaggle of crones trying to relive their youth.” Laughter rang about the room. 

“They should be lucky we even remembered the words,” Evelyn commented, to another round of laughter. 

“I don’t know,” came a clear voice from the entryway. “I thought it was good.” 

Rebecca’s arm made a slow descent, microphone ringing as it hit the table. 

“Then again, I only ever did have one good ear.” 

“STEVE!!” Annie cried from her seat. She scurried from the dais and across the dance floor, throwing both arms open wide. “Steve!” 

It was odd to see the small mountain of a man bend at the waist and curl about her youngest sister. Rebecca had been taller than Steve nearly all her life and well remembered his thin, pale frame. She’d never seen him as Captain America, because she hadn’t been one for propaganda at the time, and hadn’t any idea it was Steve. But his face was still his own, just as it had always been; youthful and passionate. Abandoning her microphone on the table, she followed Evelyn over, taking her turn to hug Steve and hold his face in her hands and essentially cry into it. 

Steve smiled and hugged them back and let them weep on him, rubbing their backs and huddling with them for long minutes on end. 

“It’s so wonderful of you to come,” Rebecca told him, holding his arm. “It’s been too long, Steve.” 

“It has,” he replied, in a way that made her feel fourteen again; light and giddy and safe and home. Steve had been as much a part of their family as if he’d been born into it. He’d only managed a few small visits after waking from the ice. The first they’d instigated themselves after the Battle of New York. Steve had looked so lost, like a child. Rebecca had realized the moment he looked her in the eyes and apologized that essentially, he was. A military Peter Pan. Made up of the dreams and hopes and aspirations of entire generations. A persona he wore like a mantle to protect him from the world. She’d held him in her arms as he cried and forgiven him because she knew he needed to hear it, needed it to move on. She had never once blamed Steve. And she had known no amount of forgiveness from any of them would be enough to mend his broken heart. 

It may not have been something anyone talked about. May not even have been something a body admitted to back when she was a girl. But Rebecca had always known Steve and Bucky were made in the stars for one another. They had loved one another more than they had ever loved anything or anyone, and while she had never been able to say as such, she had been happy for them. Steve was so broken after, she never did get around to asking. It wasn’t like she needed the confirmation, after all, and Steve certainly didn’t need any more ghosts. 

When the world had thought them dead, she’d found peace in the idea that they were finally together, the way God had intended. Two halves of the same whole, looking down on them from Heaven. There had been many times in her life when she’d felt them close. She’d prayed for them every day, and to them when things got rough. They had never once let her down. 

It had made perfect sense, even to the United States army, the bond they’d shared. Acknowledged by the fact that when the government had paid for an honorary burial, they had - on their own - buried them side by side. Steve’s flag handed to their mother after Bucky’s. Rebecca still held very clear images of their burial. Frames of time burned piecemeal into her memory, emblazoned across the backs of her eyelids. The flags lying against one another in her mother’s arms, held so closely, the only proof they had that it hadn’t all been some nightmare. The way they overlapped, pressed close as Steve and Bucky could not be. Neither of their bodies recovered, separated by miles of land and sea, even as their empty caskets abutted one another. 

Their flags had rested on the Barnes mantle side by side until their mother had passed. Rebecca had inherited them, though they took turns over the years displaying them. They were as their beloved Bucky and Steve, always together, never to be separated. Traveling from one home to another, watching over their growing families. In the eighties when newfound fervor had a millionaire offering them an astounding amount of money for them, they considered putting them in a safety deposit box or loaning them to a museum. In the end, they decided they could not trust anyone but their own family to look after them, as Bucky and Steve continued to look after them. They moved close, had the flags insured, raised and bred a legion of large dogs and later invested in a security system. If any of their husbands thought it too much, they never said, proving how right they had been to marry them to begin with. 

They had talked it over and offered them to Steve when he came back. He’d politely declined them, informing them he preferred they stay with them. They’d written Steve into their wills, ensuring when the last of them was gone, everything would return to him. The only one who would still be able to remember, who could continue on and inspire the next generation of Barnes children. 

The flags had made their first trip in twenty-seven years and held place of honor on the dais. 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Steve began; all three of them quieting him immediately. 

“This is a _family_ reunion,” Rebecca reminded him. 

“And you’re **_late_** ,” Evelyn informed him. “As usual.” 

Steve smiled that quiet, shy turn of his mouth. The one that had never graced photo paper or film, exclusively rendered in Barnes memory since 1942. 

“I brought a date,” he said. “And a present.” 

“Steven Grant Rogers!” Rebecca chided, waving a finger at him. 

Steve turned and gestured behind him, the back of his neck flushing lightly. 

Rebecca shifted to look around his massive form. 

“You know, Stevie,” came a voice she hadn’t heard in over seventy years. “Always stopping t’ help out th’ strays.” 

He smiled and it wasn’t the same confident, slightly arrogant grin of yesteryear, but it _was_ … “Bucky!” she gasped. 

“Hey Kid.” 

“BUCKY!!” 

Steve’s head gave a small jerk and Bucky rubbed both palms against his thighs, one flesh and one glinting metal, before approaching them like a skittish cat. Steve wrapped an arm about him in support. Rebecca only noticed because it got in the way of her dragging Bucky down while she cried into his chest. Evelyn and Anna were not far behind, being less aged than she, and they all crowded round, holding to Bucky so tightly Steve began to rub his back. 

Time has a way of slowing in the oddest moments. It had happened when Bucky was shipping out. That moment when he’d smiled and waved, so handsome in his uniform, a year’s worth of time. The day they’d looked out the window at the dark car that never brought good news as it came to a stop in front of their house. The look on the General’s face as he hand delivered the death notice. The lowering of their caskets into the ground. The way the sounds of guns firing had echoed for decades. 

Rebecca held her older brother in her arms and breathed him in. Her senses were worn and not as sharp as they’d once been, so she knew half of what she was taking in was filled in by memory. Her limbs weren’t as strong, but his had never been stronger. He was as large as Steve now - they never could do anything halfway - and able to wrap them all up in both arms as easily as when they had all been so small he could scoop them up and carry them around. Though he tried not to connect with the left, she noticed. 

They’d been surrounded by family all day. Literally so from the moment Steve arrived. None of it compared to the feeling of Bucky’s arm tucking her close. The soft rumble of his voice as he gently chided them for making such a scene over him. Or the way they finally felt _complete_ for the first time since 1942. The hollow ache that had resided in them since his fall from the train receding in a steady wash of familiarity and a sense of home and family that transported them all far into the past for a moment that stretched on forever. 

Some things were the same - Bucky and Steve side by side - though some things had changed - Bucky kept mostly quiet, as Steve smiled and chatted. And yet, as they sat together at the Dais, and talked and shared and made introductions, it was still their older brother returned from the dead. He was still there in the way his eyes swept sideways and the curve of his mouth, and the way he lit up whenever Steve smiled at him. 

“So, I know you’re both still spring chickens,” Evelyn said, leaning into the table so they would both focus on her. “But some of us are aging here and there’s one thing I think we’ve all wanted and waited for for nearly a century now.” 

Bucky’s brow quirked and Steve tilted his head. 

“We’ve attended your funeral - which was lovely by the way - but you both owe us a wedding.” 

Steve choked on absolutely nothing and flushed darkly. 

“It’s legal now, you know,” Annie informed them, adding proudly, “I have three queer grandchildren.” 

Rebecca felt bubbles in her chest as Bucky tilted in his seat to look at Steve, head cocking in that way that always meant trouble. “Been holding out on me, Rogers?”

“I just…” Steve replied, flustered. He waved his hands around, and Rebecca’s mind filled in the thin and gangly so vividly that for a moment, a headache threatened. 

Bucky’s brow rose. 

Steve coughed and mumbled something. 

“What’s that Captain America? I don’t think they heard you in the back.” 

Steve glared at him and Bucky grinned and it was 1942 in their mother’s parlor in Brooklyn. 

“I was hoping,” Steve struggled. “I mean…” He swallowed and looked each of them in the eye. “I know this isn’t the right way or-”

“Oh my God, Steve, are you asking my _baby sisters_ for my hand?!” Bucky squaked. 

“Shh!!!” Annie responded, a hand out, one finger up. “Let the man do it properly, Bucky!” 

“They’re the heads of your family now, Buck!” Steve defended. 

“Steve, less arguing, more asking,” Evie snapped. 

Steve straightened in his seat, ignoring Bucky’s eye roll and murmured, “Jesus…” 

“I, uh...As head of the family…” He nodded at Rebecca. “And in your parents stead, I’d like to formally request your permission to ask Bucky to marry me.” 

Rebecca grinned and folded both hands over her knee. “Well, now, Steve…” she said, turning to savor the moment with her sisters. “I don’t know.” 

“For th’ love a God, Becca,” Bucky drawled. “Please don’t drag this out. I’ll never hear the end of it!” He kicked Steve’s chair. “And you! What’s the big idea?” 

Steve didn’t look at him. 

“Yes, Steve,” Rebecca laughed. “You have my blessing _and_ my permission.” 

He leaned forward to hug her, then each of her sisters in turn, before crossing over to Bucky and getting down on both knees. “Buck,” he said, taking his hands. 

Bucky jerked upright. “Are you fucking serious?!” 

Steve squeezed his hands and his mouth twisted up on one side. “Are you gonna make this easy, Barnes? Or am I gonna have to-”

“I’ll marry you! Damn it, Steve!” 

For the first time in all of their lives, Steve leaned forward and kissed their brother - who nipped his lip before kissing back. The rest of the family were caught between cheering and gaping. 

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky hissed as Steve drew back, both arms around him. His brows drew together after a moment and he added, “No, Steve! Not in front of the girls!” 

Annie cackled louder than anyone in the room. 

“Well, now that that’s settled,” Evelyn said when things had quieted down. “How are we going to decide who gets to give Bucky away?”

Bucky groaned and dropped a hand over his face. 

Rebecca didn’t say - they all knew well enough after all - you couldn’t give away what had never been yours. Steve had owned Bucky’s heart and soul from the moment they met and vice versa. 

Annie settled a quarter over her thumb. “Flip you for it!”


End file.
